Landen Boyd parked his Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck at a construction site south of downtown Atlanta and went to work, leaving his black Smith & Wesson 9mm in a case underneath the center console.

While Boyd was eating lunch at a nearby rib joint, someone chucked a brick through his truck’s back window, crawled inside, grabbed his weapon, and fled.

The Smith & Wesson vanished into Atlanta’s underworld for more than two years. The handgun resurfaced when police found it, smeared with blood, at the scene of a shootout in early 2009 when it was linked to three crimes, including a murder.

Privately owned firearms are stolen in America with alarming frequency: between 300,000 and 600,000 every year, according to a new survey of gun ownership by researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities. At the high end, that’s more than 1,600 guns stolen every day, more than one every minute. That’s enough firearms to provide a weapon for every instance of gun violence in the country each year – several times over.

An examination by the Trace of data from police departments in 25 large American cities found that thousands of firearms were reported stolen from cars last year, and that in most cities, the numbers are on the rise. Some police officials say thieves are breaking into vehicles for the specific purpose of finding firearms.

Many states, including Georgia, have passed laws spearheaded by the National Rifle Association to expand the number of people legally allowed to carry guns in public, and the number of places where they may carry them, including vehicles. In interviews, gun owners said they took their guns with them when they travelled by car – and because they felt empowered to do so, or because they underestimated the risk, they left them there when they worked, shopped or played.

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Thieves have apparently caught on to this trend.

“It used to be the day of the radio and electronics, but there’s not a market for that any more,” said Richard Roundtree, the sheriff of Richmond County, Georgia. “The market now is for firearms.”

In 2015, the 25 police departments in our sample received reports of about 4,800 guns stolen from vehicles. In 14 of the 15 cities that also provided 2014 data, the number of stolen guns increased year over year by an average of 40%. (The pool is made up of the 25 largest US cities that responded by press time to records requests made in July and August.)

In many of the cities, including Austin and Las Vegas, the rise in thefts came as state leaders or courts tossed out restrictions that blocked carrying guns in vehicles, or leaving them there. These weapons, which are overwhelmingly handguns, are moving directly from legal to illegal possessors. In other words, owners who are carrying firearms for self-protection are arming the very people they fear.

There is no publicly accessible repository of information about weapons stolen from cars, nor has anyone carried out a systematic effort to find out what happens once they go missing. Research suggests that many owners never report losses and thefts to police – and in most states, they aren’t required to do so. Even in states that obligate owners to tell police if their gun is stolen, enforcement is lax.

The Atlanta police department’s vault contains about 7,000 guns recovered at crime scenes. Many of them are believed to have been stolen. Photograph: Dustin Chambers/The Trace

But when a gun is swiped from a car or truck, it doesn’t just disappear. Stolen weapons fuel the Iron Pipeline, an east coast trafficking route that floods firearms into north-eastern cities, often from southern states with more permissive laws and widespread gun ownership. Atlanta is the capital of a state that has come under stinging criticism for fuelling that pipeline.

In a 2012 report, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said lost and stolen guns posed a “substantial threat” to public safety and to law enforcement. “Those that steal firearms commit violent crimes with stolen guns, transfer stolen firearms to others who commit crimes, and create an unregulated secondary market for firearms,” the report reads.

Cars make easy targets. They are often left unattended for long periods of time, and there is little defense even against the most rudimentary break-in techniques, such as a brick or tire iron through a window.

Last year, Atlanta tallied more gun thefts from vehicles than any other municipality the Trace examined. Police logged about 850 guns thefts from cars in 2015, an almost 90% increase over 2009, when about 450 were reported stolen. Cars represented the most common source of stolen firearms in that city, accounting for 70% of all reported gun thefts.

Most stolen firearms are never recovered. In some cases, police reports show, owners couldn’t provide the most important identifying information: their gun’s serial number. When police did recover a gun, it was sometimes in connection with another crime.

In Florida, a Glock 27 pistol swiped from an unlocked Honda Accord in a Jacksonville-area subdivision in mid-2014 helped kill a Tarpon Springs police officer a few days before Christmas that year.

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In Tennessee, a small .380-caliber handgun snatched outside a theme park from a vacationing family’s parked Saab in 1994 emerged 21 years later in the killing of a 14-year-old girl in Nashville.

Last year in Indiana, a man wielding a Russian military rifle taken from a vehicle parked in a residential driveway is alleged to have fatally shot a 28-year-old graphics printer in a road rage incident 10 months after the theft.

“They are used in crimes to shoot people, to rob people,” said officer Tim Ducharme of the Atlanta police department, referring to weapons stolen from vehicles. Criminals see these guns as burners: weapons that are easy to steal, easy to ditch, and hard to track. “For them, it doesn’t cost them anything to break into a car and steal a gun,” Ducharme said. “You get four or five guns a week, you’re making money.”

Corey Blackshear, 39, an Atlanta HVAC technician, has lost two guns to car break-ins. Fearing where his guns might have ended up, he subsequently stopped storing them there.

“How would you feel if a gun that you own wound up causing damage or killing somebody?” he said. “That’s the feeling you go through immediately, as soon as you realize it’s stolen.”

The path of a stolen gun

An Atlanta patrolman stands watch early one August morning in a section of the city where violence has increased this year. Photograph: Dustin Chambers/The Trace

Police never solved the case of who stole Boyd’s Smith & Wesson handgun, but it didn’t go far. Two years later, it was in the possession of a 17-year-old who was too young to purchase a firearm legally, and was on a mission to prove himself to Mechanicsville’s homegrown gang, 30 Deep.

The teen, Jonathan Redding, also known as “G-Dog” and “Man-Man”, wanted a “30” tattooed on his face, to him a sign of toughness and loyalty. To earn it, though, he had to prove himself a 30.

At around 6.30pm on a Sunday in the fall of 2008, Robin McMillan walked to his parked car on the side of Standard Food & Spirits, a neighborhood tavern, when a dark-colored Jeep Grand Cherokee stopped behind him.

One of the men in the Jeep, later identified in court as Redding, stepped out and pointed Landen Boyd’s handgun in the bartender’s face, demanding cash. Another passenger grabbed McMillan’s laptop bag.

After McMillan denied having any money, Redding backed up as if to leave – but then pulled the trigger. McMillan dived into his car for cover. “He only missed by a few inches,” McMillan later testified. The Jeep and its occupants drove away.

Two weeks later, in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Redding came back to the bar. This time he was with three accomplices. All wore masks.

Another Standard employee, John Henderson, 27, had just closed down the restaurant and was sitting at the bar when Redding and the other men, later identified as 30 Deep members, heaved a rock through the glass front door. A robbery that began with one stolen gun turned deadly when one of the thieves used another stolen gun – a Glock 19 pistol, taken from a co-worker’s purse – to fire several rounds through the door. One bullet struck Henderson in the head.

Henderson died soon after.

Reshaping gun laws

Many cities where gun thefts from cars increased sharply last year are in states whose elected leaders have passed laws that make it easier to buy a gun and to carry one on college campuses, in restaurants, and in other public spaces. Many have specifically removed restrictions against leaving firearms in vehicles.

The moves often came after intense lobbying by the NRA, which is in the midst of a state-by-state offensive aimed at pressuring lawmakers to normalize the carrying of guns in public.

In Nevada, lawmakers this year extended a self-defense law known as the Castle Doctrine, which broadens legal protection for the use of deadly force, to cover intrusions into occupied motor vehicles.

In Texas, the NRA convinced elected leaders to make it easier to travel with firearms. A law that allows even unlicensed Texans to carry guns in their cars for protection came into force in 2005. Six years later, a law allowing people to keep guns in their locked cars at work also took effect, followed in 2013 by a measure that lets college students stash guns in their cars on campus. In Lubbock, Texas, reports of gun thefts from vehicles leapt about 190%, from 85 in 2006 to 245 in 2015. A similarly large increase happened in Austin, where thefts and losses rose from 129 to 377 over the same period.

And in Georgia, laws have gone into effect since 2008 that allow licensed gun owners to keep firearms in cars while in any parking lot and carry guns in bars, churches and some government buildings.

Reported gun thefts from cars in Atlanta have more than doubled over the last five years.

“We have an issue with our gun laws here,” said Darryl Tolleson, deputy chief of Atlanta police, complaining about where Georgians were allowed to carry their weapons, including public parks and unsecured areas at airports. “I’m a second amendment person, but that doesn’t make sense to me, that you should be allowed to carry weapons in those types of places.”

The spate of crimes committed with Landen Boyd’s stolen pistol did not end with the murder at the Atlanta tavern.

Two days later, Eddie Pugh, a small-time drug dealer, received a call from a neighbor that sent him sprinting from his home in south Atlanta.

“They’re on the side of the building; they’re on the side of the building,” the neighbor said. “Oh, they got guns. Get out of there. Get out of there.”

Redding and several other masked men had exited a gold Chevy Impala in the parking lot of Pugh’s apartment complex and were advancing towards his front door, guns ready.

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Pugh rushed outside, and saw the gunmen approaching, backlit by street lamps. When they saw Pugh, they opened fire. A bullet tore through Pugh’s hip as he dashed around his apartment building and sought refuge beneath a staircase.

Redding and the other assailants rushed into Pugh’s apartment and started pawing through his cabinets. Pugh’s business associate, William Kellam, had been watching television in the living room but was now crouched in a closet, clutching an AK-47 rifle.

When one of the men walked into the room where Kellam was hiding, he pulled the trigger on the AK-47. One of the rounds struck Redding in his left shoulder. He dropped the Smith & Wesson and fled.

About 20 minutes later, Redding checked into the emergency room at a hospital a few miles from the robbery. He lied about how he got shot, but investigators were suspicious. They seized his clothes and swabbed his mouth. DNA tests connected him to blood in Pugh’s apartment and on the Smith & Wesson recovered at the scene. Shell casings from the pistol showed it was same gun used to hold up McMillan outside the Standard and to shoot Henderson in the thigh.

On 7 May 2009, police arrested Redding for all three crimes. He had a “30” tattooed on his right cheek. He is serving a life sentence for murder.

This story was produced by the Trace as part of a partnership to report on exclusive new gun ownership data.

This article and an accompanying graphic were amended on 5 October 2016 to reflect new information provided by the Lubbock, Texas, police department about the number of guns stolen from vehicles in that city. The police department said the initial data it provided in response to a records request was incorrect: there were 245 incidents in 2015, not 349.